Baiso language
Baiso or Bayso is an East Cushitic language belonging to the Omo–Tana subgroup, and is spoken in Ethiopia, in the region around Lake Abaya.
Alternative names for Baiso are Giddicho, named after an island on Lake Abaya, and Alkali.
According to the Baiso people, however, Giddicho is primarily the name given to the Baiso people by the Guji Oromo, a neighbor clan with close relationship to them. The Baiso term for Giddicho apparently is maman.
As the Baiso people are a minority ethnic group in Ethiopia, their language is endangered. Today, there are between 3 500 and 5 000 mother tongue speakers of Baiso. This number, however, is decreasing. About 95% of the Baiso are multilingual in at least four languages, the most prominent Amharic, which is also the language most young Baiso speakers today primarily use throughout their day.
Only recently, the writing system of the Latin alphabet was adapted to the Baiso language. Hence, it does not yet have any literary tradition and is not sufficiently documented.
Geographic distribution
The Baiso people have come a long way to finally arrive at their present settlement area. They originally come from Jijiga, the capital of the Somali Region in eastern Ethiopia, which also explains the close relation between the Baiso and the Somali language.Afterwards they migrated to Dire Dawa, then to Gobba in Bale, and finally to Giddicho, their current settlement area. Giddicho is an island on the big Abaya Lake and Baiso is spoken in two villages there, namely Baiso and Shigima. Today Baiso people, however, also live on the Golmaka island, in the villages Waajjifo and Shink'ik'k'o situated on the north-western shore of the lake, and in the Alge kebele, located in the Mi’rab Abaya District.
This geographic distribution also divides the Baiso people into fifteen different clans, which are the following: Achele, Achegele, Baallaa, Bayso, Dabboottee, Dakartee, Dhaantuu, Fagoo, Gondoo, Golmakaa, Maman kabarraak'as, Maman kat'ee, Mulmalee, Shigima and Warjii. Cooperation and friendship plays a big role among the different clans. However, it remains unclear whether there are lexical or phonetic differences in the Baiso spoken by the different clans.
Classification
As mentioned above, Baiso is a Lowland East Cushitic language, more precisely a Nuclear Southern Lowland East Cushitic language belonging to the subgroup Omo-Tana. Amongst Baiso, the languages that are part of the Omo-Tana group are Dhaasanac, Arbore, El Molo, Rendille, Boni, and Somali.Baiso is particularly close related to Rendille and to the Somali dialects of the Upper Juba region Digil and May. They share many phonological and morphological features, such as the relationship between gender and number or pluralization.
Linguistic influence on the Baiso language
Most noteworthy are the traces of the Somali language that remain in Baiso. Baiso does not merely share grammatic similarities with Somali but one clearly notices a Somali influence on the Baiso lexis. Especially the basic vocabulary and most of their morphological features are shared.Moreover there is Oromo, the most spoken Cushitic language, which has influenced Baiso to this day. Oromo has influenced Baiso vocabulary as well as morphology, e.g. the verbal inflection.
Another, relatively recent, influence on Baiso comes from Amharic which is a very popular and widespread language among Baiso speakers and is mostly limited to cultural aspects within the language.
Grammar
Noun Morphology
Nouns in the Baiso language are inflected for number and definiteness. Gender, on the other hand, is not marked on nouns but is rather expressed through an agreement of verbs, adjectives, and demonstratives. Hence, an adjective/verb/demonstrative will agree on the gender of the noun with which it occurs.Baiso cases are expressed via postpositions, suffixes, or word order.
Number
The Baiso language has four number systems: singulative, singular, paucal, and plural. While the singular is never marked, the other number systems are marked by different suffixes that are added to the noun stems.Singulative
To make a noun singulative, one adds the suffixes -titi or -ti to the noun stem. However, this alone does not indicate definiteness or indefiniteness. Heleeltiti, for instance, means both the woman and a woman. By additionally adding a specific demonstrative pronoun or koo, one can clearly indicate definiteness: heleeltiti hasse emette or heleeltiti koo emette.Plural
The plural is formed in a more complex way. Even though most commonly the plural is indicated by suffixes, other possibilities are reduplication, internal modification, and vowel deletion.Apparently, there are nine different plural suffixes: -dʒoIaal, -laal, - dʒool, -Ii, -Ie, -aal, -eel, -ool and -l. Most frequently appear -dʒoolaal, -dʒool and -laal. Based on the quantity they refer to, these suffixes can be separated into three different categories: small quantities, medium quantities, and large quantities. However, not only quantity plays a role in the formation of the plural but also the cluster argument. For instance, singular nouns that end with consonant phonemes are not pluralized by adding the suffix -laal because it causes an impermissible consonant cluster, e.g. luban cannot turn into *lubanlaal. Moreover, the suffix -laal is commonly used for human entities and not for animals or objects.
It therefore appears that non only quantity but also phonemes and themes/concepts influence the plural suffix that is chosen. All singular nouns that end with the phonemes /b/ and /d/, for example, are pluralized by adding -eel and geminating the final consonant of the noun stem, e.g. agud turns into aguddeel. Moreover, also singular nouns that end with the vowel -e will ask for the suffix -eel when getting pluralized. In this case, the final vowel -e of the noun stem is deleted.
The least frequently used plural suffixes are -le and -li. However, there is an interesting observation to be added about the suffix -le. There are some words, like sulaale or wayyoole, which are inherently plural, thus have no singular form. Some other words, like zizaale or lukkale, can be both singular or plural depending on the context they are used in.
Nevertheless, it can be said that most singular nouns can be combined with almost all of the plural suffixes available, all depending on the context one uses them in.
As mentioned above, there are other ways to pluralize singular nouns. One method to do this is reduplication in the form of repetition of the stem-final consonant. For instance, some animate singular noun stems, parts of the human body, as well as plants take their plural form by the repetition of the stem-final consonant. Two different ways have been identified: singular noun stem + V + CC + V, or singular noun stem + VV + C. The C represents the final consonant that needs to be repeated, have a look at the following examples:
- han turns into hananno
- yiis turns into yiisaas
Some singular nouns are also pluralized by internal modification, e.g. oroono - oreen, or ilki - ilko.
It needs to be kept in mind, that even though certain singular nouns can be pluralized by reduplication or internat modification, they can be just as well be pluralized by adding a suffix. This depends on the quantity that is being referred to. Take the example of ilki :
- Internal modification: ilko refers to the teeth of a single person
- Suffix -dʒool: ilkodʒool refers to the teeth of different people
- Suffix -dʒoolaal: ilkodʒoolaal refers to a large number of teeth belonging to different types of humans and animals.
Paucal
In some cases, the paucal suffix is added to the plural form of a noun instead of its singular form. However, it is yet unclear, why this is.
Gender
As in most Cushitic languages, Baiso has two grammatical genders: masculine, and feminine. These are not marked on the noun itself but is rather expressed through an agreement with the corresponding verb, adjective, and demonstrative.Most animate entities in Baiso are randomly assigned a gender. Animals, for instance, tend to have different names depending on whether the female or male animal is referred to. Sometimes, the terms korma or t'altu are also added to specify the gender of an animal. This system of gender identification may be borrowed from Oromo.
In Baiso language, the phenomenon of gender polarity also plays a role. Thus, change of number also results in the change of grammatical gender. This is a common occurrence in Cushitic languages.
Most singular masculine nouns and all singular feminine nouns turn masculine when pluralized. But there are exceptions where a singular masculine noun will turn feminine in the plural.
When certain singular masculine nouns are pluralized, they require a singular feminine agreeance on the verbs, demonstratives, and adjectives referring to them. Take this example:
;Singular
;Plural
A similar operation occurs when comparing the paucal and the plural. When a paucal noun is used in a sentence, it will require plural agreements on its verbs, adjectives, and demonstratives. However, a plural noun will require a singular masculine agreement on its verbs, adjectives, and demonstratives. An example:
The exception to this rule are nouns that are inherently plural. These also ask for plural agreements.